What Is Responsive Website Design, And Why Does Google Like It So Much?

Have you ever heard of RWD? The chances are that you probably haven’t, yet you’ll have seen it in action in many cases when you trawl through Google’s search engine.

So what is RWD?

Well, responsive website design is the website design’s answer to dynamic navigation in the era that has seen an explosion in the use of smartphone and tablet devices. Why has the industry adopted RWD technology? Well, put simply, the industry realised that because more and more people were starting to view the internet on their smartphone and tablet devices it was imperative that the industry needed to create websites that worked across multiple platforms.

RWB does this.

Responsive website design helped to transform website design on two fronts. First because of its dynamic capabilities, website pages reformat themselves depending on the device they are being viewed on; the result is that regardless of whether a page is viewed on a phone, a laptop or a desktop, the website experience will still remain user-friendly. Secondly, RWD has transformed the web design industry. Responsive website design has done away with the need to create a separate mobile site, or a dynamically-served mobile site to satisfy internet browsers. Now one dynamic site can service all needs.

But is that the limit to the benefits and advantages of RWD?

Well, no it isn’t. Responsive website design can also help with search engine ranking. How’s that you may ask? Well, it’s because a dynamic layout can increase the chances of a website ranking higher on the search engine results pages because both users and Google love it.

Google positively advocates the use of RWD. The search giant recommends RWD as the best way to target mobile users, and positively favours mobile-optimised sites in its results for searches made on mobile devices, particularly local searches. Couldn’t you get the same sort of SEO success if businesses also had a separate mobile website? Well, yes you might well do, but from an SEO perspective it is better to have a responsive site. A separate mobile site will need its own URL and different HTML to its desktop counterpart, whereas a responsive site only uses one URL and one set of pages and files. This makes it easier and simpler for Google to crawl and index content.

Whilst separate mobile websites have their own distinct advantages, particularly for sites that feature lots of content, they also suffer from the disadvantage that they do not carry the gravitas and credibility of their desktop counterpart. Any credibility and authority will need to be built from scratch and that can take time. Most separate mobile sites do not rank particularly well on search engines. Redesigning your business’ website as a responsive website will allow it to retain its backlinks and focus all of its SEO efforts on one single site.

Many mobile websites fare badly in the search engine results pages because the content they offer is by necessity, stripped down and basic.

It’s impossible to squeeze the same amount of information into a mobile website as you could muster on a desktop site. The result is that mobile websites often suffer from high bounce rates, and that is directly reflected in Google ranking. Responsive website design overcomes this problem by providing all of the content found on a conventional desktop site in a functional way which means that there will be no need to compromise on the content that you choose to display, and that users are always able to find the information they’re looking for.

Responsive website design helps businesses to make the most of mobile and tablet traffic and offers the very best user experience to today’s visitors whether their browsing the internet using a mobile, a tablet of a desktop. For more information on responsive website design, contact Search and More on 0161 669 5544.